Move #9 - Hawaii

While the prospect of moving to Hawaii tends to make people really really excited, I will leave you all with a little warning. VISIT Hawaii first, then decide if you want to move there.

When A's position in Salt Lake went away, he was offered 3 choices. 1) He could accept a position flying the same equipment in Casper, WY. 2) He could upgrade and fly left-seat in Hawaii. 3) He could quit and find something else to do. At the time, upgrading and moving to Hawaii sounded like the best thing for his career, so that's the one we chose.

We had a house that we had only lived in for 6 months. We did not have the option of renting it out while in Hawaii due to the kind of mortgage we received, so we listed it on the market. We sold it a few months later.

We also had animals. Hawaii has pretty strict quarantine laws that apply to all animals entering the state. I won't go into too much detail regarding it, so if you want to know more you can google it. This is the time where we made the decision to not bring the cats with us to Hawaii. We saw what we needed to do and how much we had to pay just to bring the dog with us. I couldn't do that to the cats. They had both been through so much with us that we thought it better to leave them in Utah with a family who could take care of them.

A had to go to training to get his type-rating for his new airplane. Meanwhile, I had the great job of packing the house and dealing with the real-estate agents. I also got to take the dog to her numerous vet appointments to deal with quarantine.

First, Noni had to be microchipped. It's pretty common nowadays, but we had planned on not chipping her due to the cruelty of it. It was required to get her into Hawaii, so we didn't have a choice. The vet I took her to did 2 microchips. One on the old frequency and one on the new. The poor thing had 1 of them pop out immediately after insertion. She also had to have blood drawn for the rabies tider test. The guy doing it couldn't get a vein and kept sticking her. She was extremely traumatized through the whole thing. Before they starting drawing blood for the tider, I asked them if she needed a rabies vaccine before they could do it, since she was so young at the time, she had only had one rabies shot at that point. They said that it shouldn't matter. But it did. They put my dog through hell for her NOT to pass her rabies tider. I had to get a rabies vaccination done. Had they told me about it one week prior to when they did (they had the results at the time, they just didn't tell me about it yet), I could have had the second blood test done when I had taken her to Montana to have her spayed (my best friend is a vet and she did the procedure while I was there visiting). Instead, she got spayed, then had to go back to the vet in Utah for a second blood test. Let me tell you that my poor baby was so traumatized through the whole thing. If she hadn't passed the second tider, we would not have gone.

Basically, quarantine starts once the rabies tider test comes back in a certain range (I can't remember what it is at the moment.) Once it comes back, you can do one of 2 things. You can either head out to Hawaii and have the dog serve it's 90 day quarantine there, or you can stay where you are and head to Hawaii once the 90 days is up. If you choose the second one, they do an exam upon arriving in Hawaii and if the dog is healthy, they release it from quarantine. We chose the second one. A went out ahead of time because he had to. That year, we spent Christmas apart. I stayed in Utah with the dog at a friend's house for the duration of quarantine. We had sold the house by this point.

I had a really hard time getting Noni on a flight out to Hawaii. Most of the airlines at the time would not allow a dog on the plane, even in cargo. I ended up flying on one that did, but when the time came to list the dog on the flight, they told me then that they could only allow 2 or 3 dogs at a time on the plane (why, I still don't know). I ended up having to send her out as cargo 2 days before I was flying. It's a good thing A was already there. Noni and I had to drive to San Francisco to ship the car to Hawaii, so we had our airplane rides from there. It's good I have family in the area there (Hey Y'all!!!!)

Looking back, Hawaii wasn't that horrible, but I will never live there again. I much prefer the islands when I'm there as a tourist. After I came up to Alaska to set up for move # 10, I went back as a tourist when family came to visit and I enjoyed myself a lot more.